obama in his memoir starts about taking it up to her family's estates in the pond in wealthy areas in connecticut. it stuck with me and studied court records, i found another name for her and tracked her down and made the call. we have a lot of conversations since then. >> host: you write in your book, quoting vino mahmoud. he had never had many black friends. i saw that switch happen most markedly during the period that i was very close to him. he was the most deliberate person i ever met in terms of constructing his own identity and his achievements, really an achievement of identity in the modern world. first the shift from not international to american and not white, but black. >> host: >> guest: beenu mahmood was one of a group of pakistani france he had in new york. they shared with him sort of an international perspective which he lived in indonesia and his brother was there, he was searching for himself and comfortable with these guys. when he got in new york, they move their, he was the various to guy -- very astute guy. obama moved to new york to find his blackness but it didn't happen.